The Speaking Test

Australians have a habit of asking me to explain Irish history, so I’ve boiled it down to two sentences. For 6,000 years we were happy, built lots of monuments and spread Christianity to Europe. And then the English invaded.

But living over here has made me revaluate this. I knew something was up when I found myself instinctively supporting England in the Ashes series and searching the TV Guide to see when the History of Britain was on.

Last week I flew to Brisbane to sit a twenty minute English test, the craziness of which I’ll get to later. I had an hour to kill at the airport and found myself flicking through the $5 bin in the DVD store. I came across Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and was reminded of that scene where the People’s Front of Judea is discussing “what have the Romans ever done for us”. The thought struck me that if I asked the same question of myself with regard to the English; I’d probably end up with the similar results as the Judeans.

Apart from the roads, railways, canals, legal system, universities and soccer, what have the English ever done for us? Well, I’d add one thing to that list. Language. The English came to Ireland and forced their language upon us. And being the good natured people we are, we gave it back in a better condition than we received it. Thankfully, the perfidious Brits then went and invaded half the world and forced their language on the poor natives they found there. And that’s why we Irish can emigrate to lots of places and have our tongue tied mumblings understood.

I’m in the throes of applying for Permanent Residency in Australia, a task that would amuse Kafka but to me feels like a journey through the seven stages of hell. My migration agent, when she is not fleecing me, comes up with ever more bizarre reasons for delaying my application. Her latest wheeze is to send me for an English exam on the promise that it will speed things up.

They examining company offered me a place on their Brisbane test. The only problem is that Brisbane is a plane ride away and they don’t confirm places until five days before the exam. The other wheeze they have is to separate their test between a speaking one and a written one, hold these tests four days apart and not tell you the venues until the day before. To a pernickety planner like me, that was like asking NASA to plan a Mars mission over a bank holiday weekend.

As I left the office the night before the speaking test, someone asked me if I’d been practicing much. “Since the age of about 14 months” I snapped back. But maybe he had a point. I speak with an accent and have been told that I spend most of my time talking through my arse. I’m sure that is not what the good people at the language testing centre want to hear, given that they already had enough trouble trying to figure out ways of spending all the money I was giving them.

So I decided to bone up on the Queen’s English between then and the test. The only problem is that the modern digital age provides limited opportunity to converse with like minded people. I’d pre-booked a bus ticket on the web, so didn’t even speak to the driver when I caught a ride to the airport, checked in for the flight at one of those faceless terminals that litter airport concourses and promptly got on the plane and fell asleep. When I got to Brisbane I bought a train ticket into town from a machine and realised I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone all day.

On my way to the train, I noticed a traveller in some trouble and thought this was an opportunity to do a favour and engage in some useful conversation training. I asked if she needed help and she looked at me with a blank expression that sucked the confidence out of me. Maybe I am a mumbling wreck who struggles to be understood? Thankfully, it turned out that she was from South America and couldn’t speak English. I manfully gave her directions to the train in my broken Spanish (I might have been saying “Where is the toilet” but she headed in the right direction anyway).

So it came to pass that I sat down two hours later for my speaking exam having only spoken pigeon Spanish that day. Thankfully it didn’t matter. Someone once said that the English horde words like misers, while the Irish spend them like sailors. Once I started talking, the examiner couldn’t shut me up. I told tall tales, short stories and downright lies, but it filled the twenty minutes required and I had the bonus of making my inquisitor laugh occasionally, which is the ultimate goal of all Irish men who engage in conversation. At the end she thanked me for talking to her, which is just about the first time I’ve ever heard that line from a female.

I made my way back to the station through the muggy streets of Brisbane. They don’t do winter in this part of Australia and the City was full of Tee shirted tourists. As I waited at Central Station I noticed a bust of Sir Thomas Brisbane after whom the City is called. A notice below set out his illustrious career from battles under Wellington to Governorship of New South Wales and the establishment of teaching colleges. It struck me that this dead white man was one of the people who brought the language that I was now so keen to express to this country.

I suddenly respected the great opportunities I have been presented with, simply by having the English language as my native tongue. So let’s give a big hand to the English. I think they are great and every house should have one.

Preferably as a butler. They make great butlers.

You know you're a Melbournian when....

I’ve been living in Melbourne for just over two years now. Last week while munching on a muffin at work, a thought suddenly struck me. I had clicked on “The Age” website before checking out the Irish Times. That was the first time I’d done that since getting here and I realised that I’d suddenly become a Melbournian. As luck would have it, the Age ran an article on the very same subject by their esteemed journalist, Catherine Deveny.

I’ve taken the liberty of copying her observations and including them in this week’s blog, with my own comments.

YOU know you're from Melbourne if …
- When diarising anything in September you first consult the footy fixture.
I've blocked out every weekend on the slim chance that Carlton make it to the final.

- You were shocked when you found out not all street directories are called Melway.
The name of the Melbourne Street directory that is so widely used that people quote their Melway's reference in the way the rest of the world quotes their phone numbers.

- You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound.
Suburbs in the less attractive parts of Melbourne, mainly in the West. I've only been out there once and I'm still checking my pockets.

- You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.
I celebrate the fact that for the first time in my life, I’m living under a labour government but I've got a VW Golf and have floated the idea of a cleaner as I seem to have gone through the first 43 years of my life assuming that toilets clean themselves.

- You'd rather sit next to Guy Rundle on a plane than Guy Pearce.
Guy Rundle is the best political journalist in The Age and I read him, Martin Flanagan and Catherine Deveny every weekend. I thought Guy Pearce died in a strange drug related incident last year, but maybe that was the other Perthinality, Heath Ledger.

- You or someone you know has received a grant.
Lots of them, not to mention the Rudd handouts. I think my favourite was the girl receiving a PhD in March 2008, who had received a substantial grant from Melbourne University to research "The Portrayal of Lesbians in the Victorian Film Industry".

- You refer to rococo furniture as "very Franco Cozzo".
When I was furnishing my apartment, somebody mentioned Franco Cozzo. They said he was an Italian version of IKEA. When I went to see his shop in Brunswick, I realised this would be like comparing the guy who sang "Shut uppa your face" to Abba.

- You felt betrayed when you discovered Melbourne was not the only place in the world with trams.
I felt betrayed when I found out that Melbourne wasn’t even the only place in Australia to have them.

- You think the slogan on our licence plates should be "Melbourne. The Coffee Is Shit Anywhere Else", "Melbourne. Go To Sydney. We Hate Tourists" or “Melbourne What School Did You Go To?"
I think it should be “We’re a well balanced people; we have a chip on both shoulders”.

- You think the only person who looks good with a moustache is Ron Barassi.
Ron is a Carlton hero. I won’t have a bad word said about him. Moustaches are for men with porn film ambitions.

- You've looked out the window of Puffing Billy and waved like an idiot at the cars at the railway crossing. And you've watched Puffing Billy pass as you sat in a car at the railway crossing, and waved like an idiot.
Puffing Billy is an old steam train and I’ve only seen it from the saddle of my bike while climbing a steep hill. And yes, I nearly fell off while waving like an idiot.

- You think beyondblue does great work but you hate the way it makes Jeff Kennett look good. Which is depressing.
Jeff Kennett is the last conservative Premier of Victoria and now runs beyondblue, a charity aimed at people with depression. Which from my experience is anyone who has lived under a conservative government.

- You've been to the Royal Melbourne Show and the scariest ride is the train home.
Melbournians like getting dressed up, as though they are going to a wedding, head out to a large field at the edge of town for a Horse race or the Royal Melbourne Show and get trashed. I’ve had great fun sitting in Young and Jacksons bar and watching them pile out of Flinders Streetstation on the way home.

- When you hear the word ''Bougainville'' you think of Northland.
Bogans are to Australia as skangers are to Ireland and chavs are to the English. Northland is a strange shopping centre in a part of the city where Alsatians go around in pairs.

- You don't judge people on their looks, wealth or status but on the bread they buy, the coffee they serve and the newspaper they read.
I read “The Age”. If I see somebody reading “The Herald Sun”, I assume they are a little further down the evolutionary tree from the rest of us. Like at root level.

- You pretend the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry doesn't exist. Which it doesn't. Because Sydney doesn't care. And that really shits you.
Having a sister that lives in Sydney doesn’t help. But I say this without bias. Melbourne has better weather, cafes, culture and sport than Sydney. And we had the Olympics first.

- If a friend gets a new boyfriend or girlfriend, your first question is, ''Who do they barrack for?''
To put this statement in context, I arrived in Melbourne on a Friday evening back in July 2007 and checked into a hotel. The receptionist asked me “Who do you barrack for” and I’ve probably been asked this question more often than I’ve been asked my name. Barrack is the Australian word for “support” by the way, which is why we’re all so fond of Obama.

- Cup Day. Gambling at 9am. Drunk by noon. Broke at 3.20pm. Asleep by 4pm. Hungover at 5pm. All while at work.
The Melbourne Cup. The only day of the year when Australians drink more than Irish backpackers.

The Red Pepper Cafe

10pm in the Red Pepper Café and the crowd and aroma would remind you of an Indian bazaar. Almost every taxi driver in Melbourne comes from the sub continent and it’s clearly shift changeover time because they all seem to be here.

They say that if you want to try the best ethnic food, go to where that ethnic community eats. That doesn’t always work of course. We Westerners have a sanitised palate and turn our cultured noses up at the idea of eating monkey’s brains or deep fried dog.

But with Indian food, it’s safe to go with the food the locals eat, particularly as they tip a nod to our delicate tastes and have Tikka Masala on the menu. A dish invented in Birmingham so that English drunks could eat something exotic on the way home from the pub.

I ordered butter chicken with rice and naan bread (for the princely sum of 9 dollars, or 5 euros in old money) and turned to search the room for a table. It wasn’t promising. All the small tables were taken by taxi drivers - talking earnestly of road blocks and fare evaders - and students huddled over accountancy and software manuals. The larger tables were taken by families dressed in colourful saris and tight fitting turbans. Entire generations were represented there, from grannies with massive glasses to jet black haired kids in summer dresses. The kids tended to catch my eye as I searched the room. I was the only white person in the place after all and when I was a kid I would have stared at any Indian who would venture into the local pub on a Sunday afternoon.

I began to think that I’d be eating my curry on the hoof when a voice beckoned me. Ravi was dining alone and saw my dilemma. I sat down beside him and asked how his meal was. He nodded and smiled which I took to be positive.

“The lamb here is fantastic, almost as good as back home”, he said.

“And where is back home”? I asked, as he scooped up some sauce with his naan bread in an action that made my feeble attempts look like a two year old eating spaghetti.

“Mumbai, although you guys probably call it Bombay. I came here two years ago to go to college.”

“What are you studying?” I asked. “How to get to the airport if the customer doesn’t want to pay the toll and that kind of thing”. He answered.

He saw my confusion and laughed. “Most of the taxi drivers here come to study, but then they realise they can’t afford the rent and school fees, so they drive taxis to make some cash. And before you know where you are, you’re driving fifty hours a week and have no time to study.”

Ravi had stopped laughing and looked sad, as though telling this small portion of his life story had suddenly reminded him of the futility of it.

“So, what are your plans?” I asked. “I guess you don’t want to drive a taxi forever.”

“Not in this shit hole anyway,” he said. “I’ll try and save some money and go back to Mumbai and get a job, maybe in a call centre or something like that. I can’t wait to get out of here. They treat us like crap, man”.

I shuffled uncomfortably in my do gooder shoes. Ravi wanted to get it off his chest however, and a white person in a restaurant aimed at locals seemed as good a place as any to start.

“You see what they are doing on the trains? They target Indian students because they think we are meek and won’t fight back. But we beat the bloody English empire so the Aussies better watch out”.

“You beat the Empire by getting a skinny man in an oversized nappy to lie in the middle of the road. I’m not sure that would work with Australians”.

I wasn’t sure if Ravi got the joke, but at that point my food arrived and it broke the awkward moment. “Butter Chicken is a good choice”, he said. “But I prefer it on the bone. You Westerners are too soft. You want your mothers to cut up your food for you”.

Ravi smiled. Having teased each other about our respective cultures, we were ok to resume normal conversation.

“Driving a taxi after midnight in Melbourne is the worst job in the world, man. Every punter thinks you are trying to rip him off. Taking the long way home or adding phantom tolls to his bill. Then you get the ones who think you can’t speak English and talk to their friends on mobile phones about how they are in a cab with a smelly driver. And they are the normal ones. They ones who try to rob you with syringes are worse”.

“You think driving a taxi in Mumbai would be any better?” I asked.

“We have a saying in India.” Ravi replied. “Everyone can stand to have their own pigs in the house. The passengers in Mumbai might be arseholes, but they are my people. Over here it’s just strangers acting like dick heads in my car every night.”

I struggled to find some consoling words, but there isn’t much you can say to a man who has discovered that Western Capitalism is a lie. The pubs were closed and Ravi had plenty of miles to go before he could sleep. He offered his hand and I rubbed the grease from mine before grasping it.

“If you wait five minutes, I can offer you a fare to St Kilda.” I said. “With no syringes or racial jokes.”

“St Kilda at this time of night! You must be joking”. He replied. “I can get a few fares up and down to King Street and make twice as much.”

He pulled on his navy blue jacket and left me to my curry. I hope he gets what he’s looking for in life and that he learns that not all Westerners fit a stereotype, even if he did prove to me that all taxi drivers are the same.

A Night at the Theatre

“Do you fancy being in a play?” Debra said. “We’re looking for a young handsome man to play the love interest in a production we’re putting on before Christmas. My ego was suitably stroked and I agreed readily, ignoring the fact that my only previous stage experience was playing a sleeping baby Jesus in a shivering nativity play.

Two days later, I found myself in a draughty library in suburban Luxembourg with a bunch of seconded Irish civil servants. I nodded my hellos and shyly slunk into a seat at the back. As a novice in the world of theatre I wasn’t clear how to act (if you’ll excuse the pun). Should I come over all luvvie, hugging everyone and air kissing like a Hollywood Princess? Or should I brood moodily like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western?

In the end, I opted for the look which would serve me so well in my later acting life. I sat looking gormless.

It quickly became clear that I had been oversold in relation to my part. I ended up playing an idiot farmer whose only love interest was with his sheep. The play itself was terrifying, particularly when our alcoholic lead turned up drunk for the last performance and proceeded to fall asleep on stage. By that point we had been through two light failures and a partial collapse of the scenery. So I assumed that all plays were ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ experiences and was sold on the adrenalin buzz.

Shortly afterwards I moved to Ireland and after ‘resting’ for a year or so I found out about a local drama group and made a tentative phone call. As with all these things, I reckon your first encounter is key. I was lucky enough to bump into a tousled haired chap with a curious English accent. His name was Charles and he seemed to have an ill-defined role in the drama group centred on making new members welcome and finding any excuse to go for a Guinness. I was happy to oblige him in both endeavours. Before we could get to the beer however I had to show that I was a willing participant in the group’s activities. I had turned up on the opening night of their Spring Play and was duly handed a bunch of programmes and told to man one of the entry doors.

By the time the play started I had accumulated seven pounds in programme sales and it’s a testimony to the faith of that Methodist group that they would trust a strange Catholic like me with the cash box. Particularly as I arrived with a meek but slightly threatening Northern accent that jarred in the company of so many soft spoken South Dublin vowels.

In the pub afterwards Charles let me into the secret of his burgeoning writing career. He had dabbled with that monstrosity of theatre known as musicals but was now ready to get into proper drama. His first play was a comedy set in the West of Ireland during World War II. I got to play a terrorist, for the second time in the four plays I’d done to that point. I was beginning to see a trend.

I would go on to play a number of roles which were either sinister baddy or general idiot. It culminated in my portrayal of Seanie Keogh in the “Playboy of the Western World”. Seanie is one of the great put upon eejits in Irish Theatre. Every play set in the Emerald Isle has one. The guy who is always half a page behind the rest of the cast, the one who thinks the female lead is in love with him, only to get his comeuppance in hilarious circumstances at the end of both Act 1 and 2.

I made these roles my own to the extent that one of the group’s Life members embraced me after that play and told me that “you do gormless better than anyone else in the company”. It was my proudest moment.

As my belly expanded, my roles developed into bumbling detectives and lay about husbands, but I struggled to become the centre of the audience’s attention. In one performance I found myself at the edge of the stage in a state of mournful reflection. It was a poignant moment before the end of the play and I was trying to emote the loss and devastation that my character felt. I heard a whisper among the blue rinses, who through lack of hearing dominated the front row.

“Who’s he then?” one asked to her wheelchair bound companion.

“He’s the fat bloke from Act 1”.

I was crushed but determined to continue. When I moved to Australia I was curious to see how things compare here to back home. I got a part in a play shortly after arriving. I played a gormless idiot (surprise, surprise) and I guess the biggest difference I noted was that this play was performed in 36c heat, a misery I had never endured in Dublin. It was fun, but the social elements weren’t the same.

Australians take everything very seriously. For example, Cricket clubs in Ireland will have eight teams and basically every team from the fours downwards will be in it for the fun and the beer afterwards in the club bar. In Melbourne, cricket is hugely popular, but clubs will generally have only two teams. The firsts, who will be highly competitive and the seconds who comprise people desperate to get into the firsts. If you’re not in it to win, then they don’t want you.

It’s kind of the same in theatre here. They don’t like calling it amateur theatre for a start. It has to be called “Community Theatre” because everything is professional except the pay. The plays are magnificent and they definitely stretch the abilities of the actors. But sometimes you have to pinch yourself to remind your jaded body that you do this for fun.

I’ll keep looking though. There are lots of drama groups in Melbourne and surely one of them has a tousled haired Englishman, ready to welcome new members and keen to go for a Guinness.